From Best Friends to Enemies
by Lady Sloane
Summary: As Harry desperately searches for a spell to defeat the latest dark lord, he reflects on his friendship with Ron... and how everything had gone so wrong. One-shot.


Written for the International Wizarding School Championship

School: Beauxbatons

Theme: Molly's knitted jumpers

Main Prompt: [Platonic pairing] Ron Weasley and Harry Potter

Additional Prompts: [Action] reading beside a fire, [Quote] 'Burning a bridge takes too long. I prefer explosives.' — The Joker

Wordcount: 1531

* * *

Harry sat in front of the fire, bundled in one of Molly's famous knitted jumpers, trying to read a book but none of the words on the page were sinking in. They were simply black little blobs marching one after another across the page. It wasn't that the book wasn't interesting. It was interesting, and vitally important to the war effort. He just needed to find that one spell...

The problem was, he just kept getting distracted by his thoughts. His mind kept wandering, and he simply couldn't concentrate on the book in front of him. Thoughts of the past, thoughts of the present, and thoughts of the future swirled around his brain, bursting for attention.

The jumper he was wearing was actually the one Molly had given him just last year, a few days before she had died - no murdered, he corrected himself mentally. He was actually surprised that Molly had still sent him a jumper, seeing that he and Ginny had never gotten back together after the Battle of Hogwarts. With his friendship to Ron gone, there really was no link between her and Harry anymore. So he was surprised, but touched all the same.

If he had really thought about it, Molly had truly taken him into her heart and home. She had sent him a jumper every year. It was true that if he had not met Ron, he would never have met her, but she had become a surrogate mother for him all the same. The fact that he and Ron were no longer friends would not have made much of a difference towards her feelings about him.

He and Ron had broken off their friendship that year. Well, rather, Ron had broken off their friendship, in a rather explosive way.

After the war, he, Ron, and Hermione had remained close, the tragic events that they had experienced together uniting them. That is, until Ron started to get caught up in his fame.

At first, they were just little things. Things like giving out interviews, and going to Ministry events. He was, for all intents and purposes, the public face of their group. And Harry was okay with that. He certainly didn't want the fame.

But then Ron started to change. He became more arrogant. He started attending parties. Harry suspected he started cheating on Hermione as well. And really, everyone quasi-worshiping him made him grow a bit of a big head.

Before long, someone had convinced Ron that he could take over the world and become the world leader. And combined with the events of his adolescent years, the next Dark Lord was born.

Harry was by no means making excuses for his friend. Merlin knew he lived through the same things that Ron did but he didn't turn into a Dark Lord. But Ron had always wanted to be special, to stand out from his brothers. Harry supposed that Ron did stand out from his brothers now, seeing that they were dead.

Poor Hermione, who had stayed with him until the end, trying to prevent him from going down that path. She had been his first victim.

Hermione had truly loved Ron. But that didn't stop her from being murdered by him.

In a way, Harry could understand why Hermione stayed, even as rumors began to spread about Ron's infidelity. She was in love with the version of Ron that didn't exist anymore.

That was the version of Ron who had been Harry's best friend. But they were no longer friends. Ron was a completely different person than he had been. The Ron he knew wouldn't cheat on his wife. He wouldn't have murdered her either. And as a Weasley to which family meant everything, he most certainly wouldn't have massacred the rest of the Weasleys either.

But he did.

After Hermione, the Weasleys were his next victims. They were murdered barely a month after Hermione.

Everyone knew who had killed them. But with Hermione's death, a vacuum of power was left behind at the Ministry. In the chaos, with so much money exchanging hands, Ron managed to convince the aurors that he was completely and totally blameless in both cases.

Ron went on a murdering rampage after that. Mass destruction followed him in his wake. The ministry caught on, eventually, but by then it was too late.

Harry had tried to thwart his attacks, but there wasn't much he could do. He was an old man, and he didn't have the unlimited youthfulness that Ron had from all the dark rituals he had undergone.

Harry sighed, trying to direct his thoughts back to the book in his hands.

A draft blew in through the window. Harry shivered. Even while sitting next to the fire and bundled in a Weasley jumper, Harry was still freezing.

Directing his eyes back to the book, Harry attempted to read its contents. He knew that the key to winning the war against Ron was located in the book. He had to find it. He had to end the war. But yet his thoughts kept drifting

Where had that friendly boy he had met on the Hogwarts Express gone? Did he still exist, buried deep underneath the facade of the dark lord, or did he just not exist anymore, gone forever? Harry couldn't help hoping that it was the former, but had a feeling that it was actually the latter.

No matter how hard he tried, Harry couldn't completely cut off his feelings for Ron. They had shared far too many experiences for that. Ron had been his best mate for so long. It was hard to just bury that. But Ron clearly had, so Harry would just have to try.

Deciding to banish those thoughts from his head, he stared back down at the book, slowly flipping through the ancient pages.

But no matter what, his thoughts kept wandering back to Ron. Them attending the disastrous Yule Ball. Hermione constantly nagging them to study. Fighting together, side-by-side. Playing Quidditch. Hunting for Horcruxes. Playing chess in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room. Running Dumbledore's Army. Laughing together as they played Exploding Snap on the Hogwarts Express.

The list of memories went on and on, threatening to overwhelm him.

_No, _he told himself sternly, forcibly tugging his thoughts back to the book lying open in his lap. _Don't go down that memory lane again _

But Harry still couldn't help but wonder why Ron had betrayed them. They had always been best mates, ever since they had met on the train at age 11. There was no reason for Ron to just suddenly betray them and all the ideals they stood for.

_But he has turned his back to you before, _a little voice in the back of his mind reminded him, _twice, even._

Harry sighed. Trying to figure out Ron's motives was an exercise in futility. He was better off concentrating on his book.

The spell he was looking for was classified as Dark Magic. It was similar to what his mother had done, to save him. A sacrifice of life in exchange for protection. He knew that it was in the book. He just didn't know where.

Words blurred on the page as Harry frantically read. He was running out of time. Each second was punctuated by the fire crackling and a small alarm sounding. Ron was getting closer to breaking down the wards. He had to finish this before then.

He had to finish. Otherwise, the consequences would be too horrible to bear. The world would be destroyed. Ron had the willingness to kill and torture of Voldemort, but most dangerous of all, he had the one thing Voldemort lacked - sanity. A sane Voldemort would have long destroyed the world. A sane Ron would conquer it, killing untold numbers of people along the way.

That was why Harry had to stop him. Before it was too late. Before everything he knew and loved about the world was destroyed. And if that meant he had to sacrifice himself, so be it. It was for the greater good.

It wasn't like he had anything left to live for, anyway. His surrogate family was dead. Hermione was dead. The only thing left was a dark lord whom he had once called a friend. But once he found that spell, the dark lord would never be able to harm anyone again.

His eyes frantically skimmed the pages until he saw it. This was it.

Harry took a deep breath, letting the oxygen fill his lungs. His heart pounded. He experienced a sense of deja vu, flashing back to the forbidden forest, standing tall as the green curse rushed towards him. It was so similar, yet so different.

Harry smiled softly as he gently laid aside the leather-bound book, at peace with his decision to sacrifice himself so that others could live. So that the world would not be destroyed.

_This is for you, Molly. Thank you for everything you've done for me. I'll see you on the other side_, Harry thought as he began chanting to the rhythm of the crackling fireplace and the ever-growing beeping of the alarm.


End file.
